DAY 158 | Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years in prison

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie: The writer who emerged from hiding

Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder.

Matar, 27, was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder in February for his attack on the author at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022. A knife-wielding Matar leapt onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture, stabbing the author multiple times in the face, neck, arm, abdomen and eye.

The assault left Rushdie, now 77, partially blind and with permanent nerve damage. The author did not return to the Chautauqua County court in Mayville, N.Y., for the sentencing, but did submit a victim impact statement.

Judge David Foley also sentenced Matar to 7 years, to be served concurrently, for injuring the moderator who tried to stop the attack.

Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, sparked angry protests in the Muslim world over its controversial depiction of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Months before his death in 1989, Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious fatwa calling for Rushdie's murder.

At trial, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York alleged Matar was acting on the fatwa. Matar, who lived in Fairview, N.J., at the time of the attack, has not cited the religious decree as motivation, but has said he disliked Rushdie, telling the New York Post in a jailhouse interview that the author had attacked Islam. In the same interview, Matar admitted that he had read only about two pages of The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie himself testified at the February trial, telling the jury that the assailant struck him repeatedly. The novelist described being taken by surprise in the attack and then suddenly becoming aware of "a very large quantity of blood pouring out onto my clothes."

Matar ran up to Rushdie as he was about to speak and stabbed him more than a dozen times before a live audience. The attack left the prizewinning novelist blind in one eye.

Matar's defense team argued that it wasn't an open-and-shut case. "Something very bad did happen," attorney Lynn Schaffer acknowledged at the trial, adding that the prosecution was required "to prove much more than that."

Matar faces federal charges

Matar faces a separate trial on federal charges of terrorism in connection with the attack on Rushdie.

When the charges were filed last July, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said Matar "attempted to carry out a fatwa endorsed by [Hezbollah] that called for the death of Salman Rushdie — a fatwa issued in 1989 by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini."

Hadi Matar

If convicted on the federal charges — which include providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill a U.S. citizen — Matar faces life in prison. A trial date hasn't been set.

The award-winning Rushdie, who is an Indian-born British-American citizen, has written numerous books. Besides The Satanic Verses, he is also author of Midnight's Children, set in postcolonial India, and Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a memoir about the attack that was published last year.

The writer who emerged from hiding

Salman Rushdie's agent has said "the news is not good" [published in August 2022] after the author was stabbed at an event in New York state.

He was attacked on stage, and is now on a ventilator and unable to speak, Andrew Wylie said in a statement, adding that the author, 75, may lose one eye.

Mr Rushdie has suffered years of Islamist death threats after writing The Satanic Verses, published in 1988.

Police detained a suspect named as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey.

New York State Police said the suspect ran onto the stage and attacked Mr Rushdie and an interviewer at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state.

Mr Rushdie was stabbed at least once in the neck and in the abdomen, authorities said. He was taken to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, by helicopter.

"Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged," his agent said.

No motive or charges have yet been confirmed by police, who are in the process of obtaining search warrants to examine a backpack and electronic devices found at the centre.

Police told a press conference that staff and audience members had rushed the attacker and took him to the ground, and he was then arrested. A doctor in the audience gave Mr Rushdie first aid.

The interviewer who was with Mr Rushdie, Henry Reese, suffered a minor head injury and was taken to a local hospital. Mr Reese is the co-founder of a non-profit organisation that provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of persecution.

Linda Abrams, an onlooker from the city of Buffalo, told The New York Times that the assailant kept trying to attack Mr Rushdie after he was restrained.

"It took like five men to pull him away and he was still stabbing," Ms Abrams said. "He was just furious, furious. Like intensely strong and just fast."

Indian-born novelist Mr Rushdie catapulted to fame with Midnight's Children in 1981, which went on to sell over one million copies in the UK alone.

But his fourth book, published in 1988 - The Satanic Verses - forced him into hiding for nearly 10 years.

The surrealist, post-modern novel sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous - insulting to a religion or god - and was banned in some countries.

Several people were killed in anti-Rushdie riots in India and in Iran the British embassy in the capital, Tehran, was stoned.

In 1991 a Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death, while a few months later, an Italian translator was also stabbed and the book's Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot - but both survived.

A year after the book's release, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for Mr Rushdie's execution. He offered a $3m (£2.5m) reward in a fatwa - a legal decree issued by an Islamic religious leader.

The bounty over Mr Rushdie's head remains active, and although Iran's government has distanced itself from Khomeini's decree, a quasi-official Iranian religious foundation added a further $500,000 to the reward in 2012.

There has been no reaction from the Iranian government to Mr Rushdie's stabbing. Iranian media were describing Mr Rushdie as an apostate - someone who has abandoned or denied his faith - in their coverage.

The British-American citizen - who was born to non-practising Muslims and is an atheist himself - has become a vocal advocate for freedom of expression, defending his work on several occasions.

The Booker Prize winner among those recognised at Windsor Castle after being made a Companion of Honour in May 2023.

Salman Rushdie has faced death threats for more than 30 years since the publication of The Satanic Verses. Mr Rushdie said the main thrust of his novel was to examine the immigrant experience, but some Muslims were offended by portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad and the questioning of the nature of the revelation of the Quran as the word of God.

The Satanic Verses was banned first in the author's country of birth, India, and then several other countries before Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous fatwa.

The fatwa called for the killing of anyone involved in the publication of the book and offered rewards to those who took part in the murders. That fatwa has never formally been rescinded.

Surprised by the widespread nature of the protests, Salman Rushdie apologised to Muslims but went into hiding.

When Mr Rushdie was knighted in 2007 by the Queen, it sparked protests in Iran and Pakistan, where one cabinet minister said the honour "justifies suicide attacks".

Several literary events attended by Mr Rushdie have been subject to threats and boycotts - but he continues to write. His next novel, Victory City, is due to be published in February 2023.

Fellow authors such as JK Rowling and Stephen King have written messages of support.

Booker-prize winning author, Ian McEwan, called it an "appalling attack" that "represents an assault on freedom of thought and speech"

"Salman has been an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world. He is a fiery and generous spirit, a man of immense talent and courage and he will not be deterred," he added.

Writer Taslima Nasreen, who was forced to flee her home in Bangladesh after a court said her novel Lajja offended Muslim's religious faith, said she now feared for her own safety in the wake of Mr Rushdie's attack.

Sources: NPR, Scott Neuman, May 16, 2025; BBC News, Sam Cabral in Washington & Matt Murphy in London, August 13, 2022

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